David J. Nutt > Quotes

“The fact that psychedelics are about to become medicines shows that they should never have been banned in the first place—probably not even for recreational use, but certainly not as medicines. There are 50 years’ worth of people with mental illnesses and addictions who have been denied the best treatment that could have been available.”
― David J. Nutt, Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert

“Using a back-of-an-envelope calculation, since LSD was banned in the late 1960s possibly 100 million people have died prematurely from alcohol abuse. They were denied a treatment with some strong evidence. And even if LSD had helped only 10 percent of them, that would have saved 10 million lives.”
― David J. Nutt, Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert

“...set out to rectify this absurd—I would even say obscene—denial of scientific inquiry and potential therapeutic progress.”
― David J. Nutt, Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert

“Do you regularly have more than six drinks in one sitting? Or do you regret a drunken escapade that took place in the past year? If the answer is yes to either, take the full FAST questionnaire.”
― David J. Nutt, Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health

“Johnson’s research shows that psychedelics have the potential to revolutionize quitting smoking. If psychedelics hadn’t been banned, it seems likely that this use would have been discovered much sooner, and many millions of lives would have been saved.”
― David J. Nutt, Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert

“But in the 1960s, psychedelics were banned, not because they were dangerous, but for political reasons. When LSD left the lab and therapy rooms, the youth movement it fueled went against the “square” status quo and changed how young people thought, in particular about being drafted for the Vietnam War.”
― David J. Nutt, Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert

“Millions of people have taken mushrooms for thousands of years, with very few reports of negative consequences. But the government wanted to score points by being seen as “tough on drugs” as the opposition Tory party said they would be.”
― David J. Nutt, Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert